All Systems Go for Indonesia’s Moto-taxi Startup Go Jek in India

The Indonesian company Go Jek intends to make a go of it in India by introducing 2-wheeler moto-taxi services towards the end of 2018, the Economic Times has reported. “The understanding is that a portion of the company’s most recent fundraise, which is pegged at approximately $1.2 billion, will be allocated towards expansion plans into developing markets like India,” an unnamed source told The Economic Times.

The trial run will be implemented in a select number of South Indian cities and many industry insiders are keen to see whether they can clarify much of the confusing regulations that affect moto-taxis in India. If successful, GoJek will go where many moto-taxi companies have failed, including the likes of HeyBob, Zingo, Rideji and Dot which all suffered due to a nebulous regulatory framework, or lack thereof, for moto-taxis in India.

At this stage only the moto-taxis will be trialled, though in Indonesia many services fall under the Go Jek umbrella, everything from normal taxis (Go Car) and food delivery vehicles (Go Food) to massages and the delivery of prescription medicine. Many of these verticals (18 and counting) came after a frenzied 36 months and the app can now boast over 70 million downloads. It will also be interesting to see if they can then muscle in on the customer base that uses Ola or Uber moto taxis that are currently in service in Delhi and 10 other cities in India.

Go-Jek is Indonesia’s first unicorn and has seen its fortunes increase since its early days in 2010 when it was founded by Nadiem Makarim.Newly anointed CTO Niranjan Paranjape said in a press release of his role in a market like India that “One of my key objectives is to shape the lean engineering mindset we’ve cultivated over the years. For example, we have a 12 engineers handling 1 million registered drivers, which is testimonial to [a] degree of efficiency in our technology. Automation is at the centre of what we do and maintaining this culture while we scale is important for a company as large as GO-JEK.”

Arjun Harindranath

Arjun studied law and philosophy before travelling to Europe in 2008 to be a full-time writer and journalist. He's eager to catalogue the thousands of startup stories India has to offer as well as bringing his insight into recent developments within the tech space.